Overthrow - America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

[rman]

Overthrow - America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
Democracy Now
Friday, April 21st, 2006

Interview with former New York Times foreign correspondent, Steve Kinzer. Kinzer's new book is titled, "Overthrow: America"s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq." In it, he examines how the United States has thwarted independence movements in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Nicaragua; staged covert actions and coups d'etat in Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam and Chile; and invaded Grenada, Panama and Afghanistan and Iraq.

Kinzer argues that over 110 years, the United States has deployed its power to gain access to natural resources, stifle dissent and control the nationalism of newly independent states or political movements. I interviewed Kinzer in Chicago last month. This is Part II of our conversation.

part 1
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/21/132247&mode=thread&tid=25

part 2
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/08/1353206

AMY GOODMAN: Well, you are looking at 14 coups that the U.S. was involved with. What was the primary reason for the U.S. government's involvement in overthrowing other countries' governments?

STEPHEN KINZER: A lot of these coups have been studied individually, but what I'm trying to do in my book is see them not as a series of isolated incidents, but rather as one long continuum. And by looking at them that way, I am able to tease out certain patterns that recur over and over again. They don't all fit the same pattern, but it's amazing how many of them do.

....

snippet from part 2:

In Guatemala, economic life was totally dominated by one American company: the United Fruit Company. It was a uniquely powerful company, had great ties in Washington. Many of the senior people in the Eisenhower administration were either stockholders or former board members or otherwise closely connected with United Fruit. Now, in Guatemala, not only was United Fruit producing most of that country's banana exports, but it also owned more than half a million acres of land, some of the richest land in the country, that it didn't use. It was just holding this land for some potential future use.

Now, President Arbenz, who was in power in Guatemala in the early 1950s, wanted to take that land and use it to divide up among starving Guatemalan peasants. And with a democratic vote of the elected Guatemalan congress, a land reform law was passed that required the United Fruit Company to sell its unused land to the Guatemalan government at the price that United Fruit had declared on its last year’s tax returns as the value of that land. Well, naturally the fruit company went crazy when they got this request and said, “Of course, nobody puts down the real value of the land on their tax returns, and really the price should be about ten times higher than that.” But the government said, “I'm sorry. This is the way you have, yourself, valued the land, and so we're insisting that you sell it to us at this price.”

Well, this is what set the United Fruit Company in operation in Washington. It persuaded the Eisenhower administration that the Arbenz government would not have been taking steps like this, would not have launched a land reform program, would not have tried to take land from the United Fruit Company, if it were not fundamentally anti-American. In addition, there was the overlay of the Cold War. So the United Fruit Company was able to persuade the U.S. government that not only was this government hostile to an American corporate interest in Guatemala, but it was undoubtedly a tool of the Kremlin which was, as Americans then thought, working all over the world to undermine American interests.

Now, during the run-up to the Guatemala coup, the Brazilian ambassador actually came in to see Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and asked him if he was sure, if he had proof that the Soviets were manipulating Guatemala, and Dulles very frankly answered, “We do not have that proof, but we are proceeding as if it must be so.” So the United States with relative ease overthrew the government of Guatemala.

<much more>

[DrDebug]

1. United Fruit Company and Zapata

It's a small world after all...

Zapata Oil was formed in 1953 by George H.W. Bush and Brown Brothers Harriman. Later George H.W. Bush bought the subsidiary Zapata Off-Shore and went into business for himself. It merged in 1963 with Penn to form Pennzoil. Even though Zapata never found any oil, it was succesfully sold in 1966 to Robert Gow. (All SEC filings between 1960 and 1966 were sadly destroyed in 1981)

In 1969 Zapata bought the United Fruit Company. On the board of directors was Ralph Gow, Robert Gow's father. Later that year on sept. 24. Eli Black makes the third largest transaction in Wall Street history up to that moment by buying 733,000 shares of United Fruit in a single day. Black becomes the largest shareholder of the company. In June 1970 United Fruit merges with AMK-John Morrell to become the United Brands Company.

After Eli Black's spectacular suicide on February 3, 1975 – he jumped out of the window of his New York City office on the 44th floor of the Pan Am Building – Cincinnati-based American Financial, one of millionarie Carl H. Lindner, Jr.'s companies, bought into United Fruit. In August 1984, Lindner took control of the company and renamed it Chiquita Brands International.

[rman]

2. "Chiquita" - small world indeed

I knew/suspected something was wrong with Chiquita, just not exactly how.

[DrDebug]

3. There is a beautiful promotional movie of United Fruit at archive.org

The beauty is brilliant techni color of the movie. The message is very paternalistic and slightly racist as well. They really act like they owned the country.

http://www.archive.org/details/Journeyt1950

[rman]

5. thanks

downloading now

[dipsydoodle]

6. Black was a jumper

beacause he was about to be indicted for bribing the government of Honduras.

[rman]

9. Did the prospect of being indicted depress him or was he a liability to

his accomplices?

[dipsydoodle]

11. Same as

Frank Olson I guess : http://www.frankolsonproject.org/Articles/LondonMail.html

Black is a joke play on words between a friend and me - what you call sweaters we call jumpers.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

4. I heard him on that show, Amy Goodman's 'Democracy Now'

He mentioned how American plantation owners in Hawaii conspired with the U.S. government to topple the Hawaiian Queen and seize power by sending a U.S. warship with Marines. I never knew that aspect of Hawaiian history.

I believe he also briefly referenced the very bloody American campaign in the Philippines in the late 1800s, when the U.S. lost about 7,000 troops fighting a guerrilla war. I've seen statistics that estimate about one-fifth of the population of the Philippines was killed in that war, perhaps about 250,000 people. That colonial war of more than 100 years ago has been called 'America's First Vietnam'.

[Hissyspit]

7. I've been meaning to post about this book for awhile and kept

forgetting, so thanks, rman. Every American should read it! :thumbsup:

[dipsydoodle]

8. You quite likely could've written the book yourself

just rooting around the internet and reading Ward Churchill's "on the JUSTICE of ROOSTING CHICKENS"

The overall point is that the USA is owed back by oh so many nations that almost anyone could've been motivated to carry out 9/11.

Dulles should be plural. John Foster was the US Secretary of State, while Allen was, I believe, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It may be no exaggeration to say, the Dulles' were the founding architects of post-war US foreign policy.

[leftchick]

10. I caught the end of Amy's interview yesterday

He was also on Fresh Air a few weeks ago. It is wonderful to see this book out. Hopefully it will open a few "patriots" eyes. Thank you for the link.

:)